A Life That’s Nashville Good

Don’t put dirt on the Rayna/Deacon grave just yet. It’s so obvious that is so not over.

Toward the end of Wednesday night’s (May 7) of Nashville, Deacon kind of came clean to Rayna about how he felt about missing the night their daughter Maddie was born. The night, he admitted, he was probably emptying a bottle in some dive somewhere.

“I told you I was never gonna forgive you for not telling me about her 14 years ago,” Deacon tells her during a concert for the troops at Fort Campbell. “And I’m not, because that would mean you did something wrong. You didn’t. You were just protecting our little girl. I finally get that. All I ever did was give you hell for it, and I’m sorry. I’m grateful.”

By “I’m sorry,” I think what Deacon meant was, “Marry me, Rayna.”

That message came through loud and clear to me at the end of the episode when he joined Rayna, Maddie and Daphne on the stage for “A Life That’s Good,” a title that suggests a perfection the potential James-Claybourne family is impossible to ignore. I think even Rayna’s ex Teddy and her current boyfriend Luke saw it, too, because they both looked furious and hopeless during that performance.

At one point during the episode, Deacon even went so far as to ask Teddy what it was like the night Maddie was born.

“You raised a hell of a girl, Teddy, and you were there for all of it,” he says. “I just want to know what I missed.”

Teddy tells him that when he held her, it was a love he’d never known before.

Elsewhere in Nashville, Avery tried to get Juliette to forgive him for being there when Scarlett needed him. Jeff tried to use the sordid one-night stand at the BMI party to bribe Juliette into signing with his label. Will tried to call the personal trainer Tony for a private session because he was struggling with his fake marriage and the real stress of reality TV. And Scarlett announced she was leaving town.